1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally concerns techniques for matching resources of a sell-side securities research department to clients (or accounts) of the securities research department.
2. Background of the Invention
In the securities research industry, so called “sell-side firms” provide, among other things, research regarding securities (such as stocks or bonds) to so-called “buy-side firms,” i.e., institutional investors such as mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, etc. Historically, analysts of the sell-side firm largely determined the amount of service a particular client buy-side firm received from the sell-side firm. The analysts were typically given some guidance as to which clients were more important relative to others (such as in terms of profitability to the sell-side firm) in the assumption that more service resources would be allocated to those clients, but often the service levels were driven by other considerations, such as the ranking of the analyst. This often resulted in an inefficient allocation of resources by the research department. Accordingly, there exists a need for techniques to optimize the allocations of resources of a securities research department.